PTI invites applications from ticket aspirants

LAHORE – The PTI in a bid to test the tides of its tsunami in the general election has invited the applications from aspirants of party tickets for National and Provincial Assemblies. The PTI in an innovative way invited the applications from aspiring candidates for party tickets through courier service, while party leaders who devised this plan claimed that this arrangement put into action to establish the transparency of the process. Ahsan Rasheed, member political strategy committee and former Punjab president PTI told The Nation on Saturday that party’s parliamentary boards will consist of all elected organizations of districts, regions, provinces and centre. Informing about the details of selecting the party candidates for National and Provincial Assemblies for the general elections due this year, said, “The district organizations will send three names for each constituency of the National, Punjab, Khyber Pukhtunkhawa, Sindh, Balochistan and Gilgit Baltistan Assemblies. The party organizations for different regions of their provinces will review the names of the district organizations forwarded names for party candidates”. “In the next step, the regional organizations will send the lists of party members desire party tickets to their respective provincial organization. The provincial organizations will send select two names out of three for each constituency of National and Provincial Assemblies and forward the short-listed details to the central organization, which will finally decide candidates for the general elections”. He informed that district parliamentary boards would also get the inputs of senior party leaders of their respective districts, however the district boards would not be bound to follow the inputs of the mentioned leaders. When asked about the verification of the details provided to the party by the party ticket applicants, he said that verification would automatically be carried out when the applications of the desiring contenders would pass through district, regional and provincial parliamentary boards. However, party sources claimed that a small unit comprising party members with security services background would verify the information provided by party members apply for the tickets. A PTI leader who headed a civilian intelligence agency during Benazir Bhutto’s government most likely to lead the information verification unit. They informed that the former spymaster had carried out a little drill to take up the task of information verification process sometime back with the assistance of his hand-picked team from the party ranks. The sources added that information verification unit would directly answerable to the party chief and send its reports to him only.